Data Science

The National Library of Medicine’s Radiation Medical Emergency Management (REMM) has been updated. This resource provides guidance for health care providers, primarily physicians, about clinical diagnosis and treatment of radiation injury during radiological and nuclear emergencies.

The radiation detectors page has been completely redone to include much more detailed information. A new table describes and illustrates various types of detectors and their optimal use. The key references section provides new information about radiation detection devices and estimating dose in large radiation incidents when adequate detection resources may be scarce.

The myeloid cytokines page has significant new information, including mention that Leukine (sargramostim) has been approved by the FDA for use with radiation-induced myelosuppression.

A new version of the Mobile REMM app, which contains selected pages from online REMM, was released in the App Store and Google Play Store. This new version reflects the content updates published on REMM online.

What is a healthcare hackathon? Generally speaking, a healthcare hackathon is a social event that focuses on building small and innovative technology projects that aim to resolve healthcare challenges. “Hackathon” is a portmanteau of the words “hack” and “marathon,” which in turn translates into some kind of race against the clock to solve challenges.

MIT Hacking Medicine founded in 2011, is made up of MIT students and community members with the goal of innovating the healthcare community and driving new medical innovations. The MIT group meet this goal by carrying out innovative events like healthcare hackathons; amazingly, they host more than 80 healthcare hackathons a year. MIT Hacking Medicine even has a free handbook that serves as a resource for anyone interested in hosting similar kinds of healthcare hackathons in their respective communities.

Here in the Pacific Northwest Region, Washington State University’s (WSU) Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine (ESFCOM) Hackathon is very much inspired by the MIT Hacking Medicine model of healthcare hackathons, with a few interesting modifications. Their first hackathon in 2018 tackled the theme of addressing rural health challenges in Washington State, with prizes awarded to the top three hackathon teams at the event. Building off that success, WSU will be hosting another healthcare hackathon from April 12th – 14th, with the overarching theme of innovating solutions that will tackle behavioral health challenges, a pressing issue in Washington State today.

WSU welcomes patients, students, faculty, developers, caregivers, and more to attend their second healthcare hackathon. What makes the WSU ESFCOM healthcare hackathon unique from other healthcare hackathons is the research and reference presence of academic librarians who provide research services to the hackathon participants throughout the event.

Librarians from the University of Minnesota’s Health Sciences Library in the Twin Cities made the 160 mile trek to the University’s coordinate campus in Duluth to conduct a special half-day workshop for researchers on data management. The workshop was part of a Research Data award that was funded through the GMR. Julie Davis, workshop participant and Project Coordinator for the Research for Indigenous Community Health Center in the College of Pharmacy stated, “My most valuable takeaways were learning more about best practices and concrete strategies related to file naming, file organization, project documentation, and data preservation.”

Two upcoming data weeks, Love Data Week and Endangered Data Week, provide opportunities to share stories, learn new skills, and consider how data shapes our everyday life. No matter your role – researcher, librarian, data professional, scholar, or community member – everyone is invited to contribute and participate!

Love Data Week: February 11 – February 15, 2019

Similar to Open Access Week, the purpose of the Love Data Week event is to raise awareness and build a community to engage on topics related to research data management, sharing, preservation, reuse, and library-based research data services. We will share practical tips, resources, and stories to help researchers at any stage in their career use good data practices.

This year’s theme focuses on data in everyday life. As data creation, gathering, and use continues to expand, its impact transforms how we move through and experience the world. This theme is being explored through two topics that offer a rich opportunity to engage many audiences:

Open data – What is open data? And how does it play out in our everyday life? The answer depends on who is asking – open data for government, citizens, researchers, and businesses can mean very different things.

Data justice – Social justice and big data are current buzzwords, but how do these two areas intersect? Can data be used to effect social change and fight inequality, and if so, how?

Endangered Data Week: February 25 – March 1, 2019

Endangered Data Week is a collaborative effort coordinated across campuses, nonprofits, libraries, citizen science initiatives, and cultural heritage institutions, to shed light on public datasets that are in danger of being deleted, repressed, mishandled, or lost. The week’s events can promote care for endangered collections by: publicizing the availability of datasets; increasing critical engagement with them, including through visualization and analysis; and by encouraging political activism for open data policies and the fostering of data skills through workshops on curation, documentation and discovery, improved access, and preservation.

To support Endangered Data Week, consider hosting one of the following events or activities:

Subject-specific workshops or presentations using endangered datasets

Lectures or roundtables on issues of transparency, policy, or critical data literacy

Are you planning to celebrate Love Data Week or Endangered Data Week? What activities or events do have planned at your institution? If you would like to share how your organization participated in these data weeks, please contact Liz Waltman or get in touch on social media @NNLMSEA.

You are cordially invited to the University of Cincinnati’s 4th Annual Data Day sponsored by The University of Cincinnati Libraries and IT@UC.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are topics gaining national attention. Our 4th Annual University of Cincinnati Data Day will explore these topics in depth and highlight how researchers can expand their understanding by considering the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion on their own research.

What: University of Cincinnati 4th Annual Data Day

When: Monday, April 1, 2019 9am – 4:30pm

Where: Tangeman University Center, Great Hall (located on the main campus of the University of Cincinnati)

Cost: Free

The day will be comprised of panel discussions, an interactive session where participants will learn R programming skills, and keynote speakers to start and end the day. The first keynote speaker, Amanda Wilson, will highlight the historic All of Us Research Program that is gathering data from one million individuals to assist in delivering precision medicine by taking into account individual differences in lifestyle, environment, and biology among participants. The second keynote speaker, Deborah Duran, will address how diversity and inclusion are necessary considerations as we consider our research and how doing so can have an impact on us all. Panelists will discuss health disparities and health equity research from local and statewide perspectives as well as how data is being used to empower social justice.

In a recent blog post, Amanda J. Wilson, head of NLM’s National Network Coordinating Office, laid out priorities for NNLM in the upcoming year.

Engaging through All of Us: All of Us is a nationwide program with the ambitious goal of enrolling one million or more diverse participants. As an All of Us partner, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine develops activities and creates opportunities to provide health resources through public libraries. The NNLM All of Us Community Engagement Network funds outreach projects and develops programming to raise awareness about All of Us and improve health literacy. The NNLM partnership has reached 16 states and more than 500 individuals through 150 Network-sponsored activities and events. In addition, last November the Community Engagement Network launched the NNLM Reading Club to help libraries address health information needs through book clubs.

Equipping a Data-Ready Workforce of Librarians: Since the NNLM Training Office (NTO) launched the training program Biomedical & Health Research Data Management for Librarians in January 2018, there have been two cohorts. The program works to better equip health information professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to support research and deliver improved services to their institutions, communities, and colleagues. NNLM RD3: Resources for Data-Driven Discovery supports their ongoing activities. In addition, videos from the 2018 research data management webinar series are available on YouTube. Topics range from Wikidata to data visualization and from library research data management services to teaching R for statistical computing. In 2019, a new course debuts, Beyond Research Data Management for Biomedical and Health Sciences Librarians. This second-level course will cover advanced topics in research data management, including science communications and the role of data management in data sciences and open science. (The application period for this course closed January 4.)

Editing Wikipedia: The world’s largest medical library continues to increase its presence on the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Through two national edit-a-thons last year, Network members helped improve available health information by editing Wikipedia articles related to rare diseases and women’s health. In total, participants made 1,441 edits to 315 articles, which, collectively, have been viewed over four million times. They also engaged with their peers and with NNLM staff on Twitter via the hashtag #CiteNLM2018. The first Wikipedia #CiteNLM Edit-a-Thon of 2019, Elevating Health Equity, will be held this May during the Medical Library Association annual meeting!

Through these activities and more, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine is looking to expand our reach, enhance our impact, and entice more medical librarians to join our efforts to improve the public health and the public’s access to trusted, quality health information. If you aren’t already a member, consider joining. You’ll be glad you did!

AcademyHealth is proud to announce the third annual HSRProj Research Competition for Students hosted by AcademyHealth and the National Information Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). This annual competition invites students to use data from the Health Services Research Projects in Progress (HSRProj) database in conjunction with other sources to identify research gaps in health services and systems research.

Submission Requirements

All projects should include the following:

A research statement that outlines a topic related to population health and/or social determinants of health that is missing or under-represented in the field of health services or systems research as a whole. You may also choose to focus your project on missing or under-represented topics in the HSRProj database itself.

A methods statement that clearly explains how the HSRProj full database download was deployed, as well as the rationale for additional data sources, such as those listed below under “Resources.”

A statement of findings/conclusions and recommendations, including a justification of the significance of the topic.

Data visualization(s) (no more than three) that illustrate the findings in an engaging and comprehensive manner (e.g., graphs, charts, models, infographics).

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible, students must:

Be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program in health services research, communication science, data science, informatics, information science, public health, health economics, statistics, or a related field;

Work alone or in groups of no more than three;

Work with an academic advisor (and it is strongly encouraged, but not required, for students to seek out university librarians for advice on your project);

Use the HSRProjfull database, which is available online in .xml here and Excel format here; and

Use at least one supplemental data source, such as those listed below under “Resources.”

Judging Criteria

In the initial phase, a set of judges drawn from the diverse fields that comprise health services and systems research will score each structured abstract based on the following criteria:

Use of the HSRProjdatabase and relevant HSRProj attributes;

Clarity of the explanation of methods and proposed research gap;

Significance of the identified “research gap” to the field or practice of health services and systems research;

Clarity of the rationale for any additional data source(s) used in the project; and

Creativity, clarity, and impact of the data visualization(s).

From the pool of submission, the judges will select five finalists to present a ten-minute web-based project synopsis. Finalist presentations will highlight the research purpose, methodology, findings, conclusions, and data visualizations. Presentations are expected to take place during the week of April 22, 2019. The winning project, and four honorary mentions, will be announced in early May.

How to Apply

The submission window for this competition will close on March 1, 2019 5:00 p.m. ET.

Submissions are to be made through the application webform. A complete submission needs to include:

A structured abstract for the project of no more than 500 words, using the judging criteria as a guide; and

Up to three data visualizations that illustrate the authors’ approach and findings.

Students are encouraged to seek course credits through their university for participation in this competition.

NOTE: There will be NO exceptions to the March 1 deadline. Finalists will be notified of their selection by the judges by the first week of April.

Prizes

The winner or winning team will be invited to present their research as a featured poster at the 2019 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Washington D.C., on June 2-4, 2019. Please note that the winner(s) will need to cover their own lodging, transportation, and registration. In addition, the winner(s) will be invited to work with AcademyHealth staff to write a blog post to be featured on AcademyHealth’s website describing their project and experience.

This Wednesday, the PNR and PSR (so, the whole west coast!) regions of the NNLM are joining forces to offer what promises to be a fantastic webinar, by data guru Margaret Henderson (who literally wrote the—or at least a—book on research data management for librarians). She will talk about how to get data services started at your institution, after taking one of the many online (and in-person) courses on research data management (RDM) available these days.

But, what if your new year’s resolution is to actually TAKE one of the courses? Where do you find the one that will work for you? Or, what if you just want to know more about the RDM scene in general? This post is for you! Here are some ideas for finding the right offering for you…

–Look for news and even list-servs that discuss data (the ones from RDAP and IASSIST are good places to start), which will have posts on the latest courses available; or, perhaps, a webliography?

–Look beyond the US—Europe, Canada, Australia, and others have been doing RDM work for even longer than we have, and there are some sophisticated and accessible offerings! Take a look here and here and here…

And, watch this space! You may be aware that the NNLM has offered an intensive RDM 101 course (spring and fall 2018), and RDM 102 is about to begin. The NLM’s director, Patti Brennan, is data savvy and data focused, so there are sure to be more offerings in the coming years! I’ll leave you with this recent talk she did, the closing plenary for the Coalition for Networked Information, titled “NLM & NIH Partnership in Accelerating Discovery Through Data”. Enjoy!

We are excited to be collaborating with our sister region, Pacific Southwest Region, to combine our monthly webinars this month to provide a wonderful session we believe you will find informative and useful.

Session title: What to do After You Take a Data Course

Presenter: Margaret Henderson, Librarian at San Diego State University. Margaret has presented and written on many library topics over the years, and wrote the book, Data Management: A Practical Guide for Librarians (2016, Rowman & Littlefield).

Summary: There are many online and in-person courses available for librarians to learn about research data management, data analysis, and visualization, but after you have taken a course, how do you go about applying what you have learned? While it is possible to just start offering classes and consultations, your service will have a better chance of becoming relevant if you consider stakeholders and review your institutional environment. This lecture will give you some ideas to get started with data services at your institution.

In her first blog post of 2019, NLM Director Dr. Patti Brennan had many exciting updates to share. First, as of January 1, NLM has a new organizational chart that anticipates the outcome of a first phase of reorganization that will be implemented over the coming year. This initial phase focuses on consolidating NLM staff and related programs into fewer divisions and offices to improve efficiency and our overall effectiveness. Details of these changes will continue to be worked on during the year, with regular updates on the progress and the implications for specific NLM programs and services.

Missing from the new organizational chart is the Specialized Information Services (SIS) Division, the place within NLM that addressed the health information needs of specific communities, including Native Americans, minority-serving institutions, and urban teens. Commitment to these and other populations traditionally underserved within health care have not wavered, but NLM is working to ensure both the sustainability of this notable work and its integration into the fabric of the new NLM. The new, streamlined organization will incorporate within other offerings the critical information resources and services SIS originally provided.

Second, the Office of High Performance Computing and Communications, situated within the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications since the early 1990s, has closed. This unit offered many innovations over the years, advancing health computing to the 21st century and launching one of NLM’s most incredible ventures, the Visible Human Project. NLM will continue to make the Visible Human data available, but staff from the Office will be incorporated into other branches of the Lister Hill Center.

The third arm of the reorganization integrates the creative design and development services of the Audiovisual Programs Development Branch, also from the Lister Hill Center, into NLM’s Office of Communications and Public Liaison. This realignment will help incorporate advanced media and visualization techniques into NLM’s robust communication programs to better inform the public of the many information services and research advances.

Finally, NLM is renaming its Office of Health Information Programs Development the Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI). OSI will play a key role in advancing NLM efforts in data and open science, program evaluation, and the strategic plan implementation.

Along with these changes there will be assessment of staff skills and evaluation of interests to best align those skills and interests with NLM’s evolving needs. NLM is committed to retaining its federal staff as functions are realigned, and will do its best to ensure matching of the talented staff with work they enjoy and the Library needs.

Looking for professional development opportunities? The National Network of Libraries of Medicine provides opportunities for library staff, health professionals, educators and others to learn about new health information resources and programs. All of our classes are free, and many are eligible for continuing education credit from the Medical Library Association. Even if you will not be able to attend a live webinar, you can still register to receive a notification when the recording is available on the NNLM YouTube Channel. Check out some of our January 2019 offerings and register today!

From Movies to Meals: Senior Services and Spaces at Your Local Library – January 9, 1:00-2:00 PM ET – Libraries often are the de facto senior centers of our growing – and aging – communities. The Marion Public Library embraces this role through program design, community feedback, and strategic partnerships. In addition to “traditional” library programming, this webinar hosted by GMR will describe how the library works to meet the nutritional and social needs of seniors through twice-weekly congregate meals as well as a monthly mobile food pantry visit.

Connecting Graphic Medicine to Your Community with Programming – January 9, 2:00-3:00 PM ET – Join NER with guest presenters Alice Stokes and Tori Rossetti as they give short presentations on the graphic medicine programs they’ve run at their institutions and take attendees’ questions. Learn about starting and running a graphic medicine book club, incorporating participatory art to engage your audience, best practices and lessons learned.

MeSH Changes and PubMed Searching – January 11, 11:00 AM-12:30 PM ET – Every year, the Medical Subject Headings are updated. How does this affect your PubMed searches? What happens when a term gets changed, or added, or removed; or moved to a different part of the MeSH hierarchy? How do you accommodate vocabulary changes over time in your comprehensive searches? How do you check your saved searches and alerts? Join NTO for this webinar to learn the answers to these questions.

What to do after You Take a Data Course – January 15, 3:00-4:00 PM ET – There are many online and in-person courses available for librarians to learn about research data management, data analysis, and visualization, but after you have taken a course, how do you go about applying what you have learned? While it is possible to just start offering classes and consultations, your service will have a better chance of becoming relevant if you consider stakeholders and review your institutional environment. This lecture by Margaret Henderson and hosted by PSR will give you some ideas to get started with data services at your institution.

More Than a Bandage: Health Information Resources for K-12 Health Professionals – January 15, 3:00-4:00 PM ET – Sponsored by MAR, this course will introduce free health information resources for K-12 health professionals provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Participants will learn about consumer health sites covering general health, drug information, and environmental health, with an emphasis on MedlinePlus.

The Pieces of Systematic Review with Margaret Foster Webinar Series – Third Thursday of every month from January-May 2019, 2:00-3:30 PM ET – Systematic reviews are well-documented as contributing to evidence-based healthcare by, in part, revealing gaps in the literature or illustrating the effectiveness of health interventions. They are common practice, but they can often be fraught with issues in how they’re conducted. There is a constant need for education and discussion. In each live session of this SCR webinar series, Margaret Foster draws from her expertise to discuss issues, provide examples, and demonstrate the steps of her Pieces process, as described in her book, Assembling the Pieces of Systematic Review: A Guide for Librarians. This second run of the original series will provide more practical examples for conducting each step of a systematic review as well as look at other types of reviews.

STEAM Programming for Adults – January 22, 2:00-3:00 PM ET – Adult STEAM programming recognizes that adult life-long learners also benefit from an increased interest and knowledge of STEAM topics which can empower to them to think creatively and to design and engineer solutions to real world problems. With this goal in mind the Catawba County Library has established a series of community driven STEAM programs for Adults. During this hour long session, SEA and guest presenter will share the inspiration for Adult Steam programs, how to get started, find community partners, funding ideas, and program evaluation. Participants will also learn how to transform popular DIY craft programs into Adult STEAM programs.

From Problem to Prevention: Evidence-Based Public Health – January 23, 2:00-3:00 PM ET – Curious about evidence-based public health (EBPH) but not sure where to start? Join MAR for this class that will explain the basics of evidence-based public health (EBPH) and highlight essentials of the EBPH process such as identifying the problem, forming a question, searching the literature, and evaluating the intervention. The purpose of this class is to provide an introduction to the world of evidence based public health and to give those already familiar with EBPH useful information that can be applied in their practices. In addition to MLA credit, this course has been approved by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing for 1 CECH for Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES).

Transgender Health: Research and Resources – January 29, 2:00-3:00 PM ET – Sponsored by MAR, this session will discuss barriers that people who are transgender may face in their communities. The primary barriers discussed by guest speakers will include those that affect access to healthcare and re-entry to the community following incarceration. The guest speakers will also provide information about online and print resources that librarians, public health professionals or others interested in improving the health of transgender individuals in their communities can turn to for information.

Self-promotion–we all are called upon to do it at some time or another. And my time has arrived! This post is to let you know that if you’re interested in reading about research mandates, from funders, institutions and publishers, there’s a new book chapter that’s just been come out, by me and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Research Data Librarian Nina Exner. The title is “Responding to Change: Reinventing Librarian Identities in the Age of Research Mandates” and it appears in the volume Challenging the “Jacks of All Trades but Masters of None” Librarian Syndrome (Advances in Library Administration and Organization, Volume 39). You can see that it is fascinating reading, at least for my cat Dorothy!

Seriously, we didn’t really know until we started what a big topic this would turn out to be. From the abstract, you’ll see that we: “(1) outline the changing scholarly ecosystem; (2) summarize major terms and concepts to understand the process of producing research outputs; (3) discuss the perspectives of the major players in the research enterprise; (4) present some of the challenges that research mandates and the changing research environment have brought to libraries; and finally (5) review ways in which libraries have successfully addressed them.” Phew!

Of course, by nature of this quickly moving environment, some of what we offer has shifted in the year since we wrote it, but we hope there are still many helpful suggestions! There are two figures in particular that lay out some ideas for librarian involvement in the research enterprise.

Also, if you are OK with not having the publisher’s beautified version, the final manuscript version is available in open access form through the University of Washington’s ResearchWorks Archive.

While not light holiday reading, it may fit the bill if you make a new year’s resolution about enhancing your current awareness activities! Either way, we welcome feedback– please feel free to contact me at glusker@uw.edu with any comments, suggestions, etc.

FORCE11 has announced that the third annual FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute (FSCI) will take place at UCLA from August 5 to 9, 2019. With this move, FORCE11 begins a long-term collaboration with the UCLA Library to plan and present FSCI, and improve understanding and engagement with the fast-changing world of research communication on campuses everywhere. FSCI started in 2017 as a partnership between FORCE11 and the University of California at San Diego. Now setting down roots in Los Angeles, FSCI is a week-long summer school in open research for researchers, librarians, publishers, university administrators, funders, students and post-docs that incorporates intensive coursework, seminars, group activities, lectures and hands-on training. Participants learn from leading experts, have the chance to discuss the latest trends and to gain expertise in new technologies. FSCI is transdisciplinary and relevant across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.

“Working together with the academic community to explore frontiers in research communications is key to changing practices,” said Ginny Steel, UCLA Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian. “The UCLA Library has been actively involved in efforts to enhance and expand scholarly discourse through openness, and the summer institute will be a valuable forum for us to consider the opportunities and challenges in concert with the international research community. We look forward to welcoming everyone in August.”

FSCI courses explore changing practice in data-sharing, authorship, peer review, research assessment, publishing and more. There are courses for those who know very little about current trends and technologies and courses for those ready to pursue advanced topics. FSCI covers scholarly communication from a variety of disciplinary, regional and international perspectives. Course information and registration will be available in the spring. To stay updated on details as they emerge, sign up to receive email updates, join the Facebook page, follow @force11rescomm on Twitter, or visit FSCI2019@UCLA online.